Medicaid Kit (2022)

Medicaid Kit was my first capstone project in the Springboard UX/UI Design curriculum. I was working under the guidance of two mentors named Thania and Roxana, and a village of fellow students.

Here's what I learned:

The Problem Space:

One of the most difficult tasks in this capstone project was selecting a problem space to research. I decided to work within the problem space of obtainability and transparency in health insurance. Mainstream news circuits in the U.S. provided an easy intro to the topic.

The Designer's Role:

🔎 Primary and secondary research on the problem space

📰 Presentation of the problem space for stakeholder interest/ stakeholder buy-in

💭 Ideation of solution in the form of a digital product

📢 Presentation of product idea for design & dev team feedback and buy-in

🛠 Prototyping of product based on user research

🔬 Testing of prototype in first round of usability test

✂ Update prototype based on tests & re-test (iterations)

📈 Present findings to stakeholders

🛠 Further collaboration with design and dev teams in development phase (beyond the scope of this project)

Secondary Research Insights

The topic of affordable healthcare and health insurance in the U.S. has been making headlines for several years as people struggle to afford medical procedures.

In other words:

Primary Research Insights

• After interviewing 5 participants about their experiences with health insurance and healthcare, I gathered these notable insights:
• 💡 4 out of 5 interviewers expressed that they avoided going to the insurance marketplace for health insurance.
• 💡 3 out of 5 interviewers say they are afraid to change jobs or more due to worries about health coverage.
• 💡 All 5 interviewers expressed a negative opinion of the U.S. healthcare system, and 3 out of 5 cited the low standing of the system among other developed countries.

Formulation of User Profiles

After interviewing five people about their experience with health insurance and Medicaid, I ran with their ideas and built an empathy map toward different archetypes of user: “Not Employed, Freelancer, Essential Worker, and Recent College Graduate”.

I was able to form four imagined personas out of those concepts.

Minimum Viable Product / Minimum Value Product

I decided to prioritize the function of signing up for Medicaid. Secondary to that goal, this product should be able to assist users with finding medical providers or coverage. These priorities were determined by imagined scenarios for each persona using Medicaid Kit.

Wireframes and User Flows

An important part of ideation was coming up with a path that a digital product could lead a user down to complete their needs and tasks.

Below are wireflows - a combination of wireframes and user flows, where a path is shown by what the user will see on their mobile device when using this product, soon to be named Medicaid Kit.

Wireframe Test Insights

I tested the product wireframes with five users, (one in-person and four via a zoom or skype), and received feedback purely on usability.

💡Most feedback was related to the number of redundant provider search questions.

High-Fidelity Prototype Visual Design

Why the fish and flowers? This early version of the logo includes the New York State fish (the rainbow trout), and its state flower, (the prairie rose). The usability tests revealed that no one understood it and it was removed.

High-fidelity Prototype Testing Insights:

I tested this more visually-designed prototype with a different set of five users. The usability became more convoluted for the below reasons:

💡In the first round of high-fidelity testing, Illustrations in the logo and interface caused confusion and slowed down users, and would have to be removed for the second round of usability tests.

💡The high-fidelity designs were overhauled to improve cognition, which included fewer cosmetic flaws, and fewer distracting illustrations.

💡Many users mentioned that the ‘deafen’ button on the video interface would be confusing for less experienced users, and lacks a clear use case. It was later removed in favor of a simpler interface.

💡Users guessed, sometimes incorrectly, how many questions they answered during the Medicaid application. In the last iteration, I added descriptive text above the progress bar to indicate how many questions the user has answered out of the total 7 questions.

💡In the first round of testing, two of six users spent some time doubting themselves on questions with extra instructions. In the second round of testing, I made those instructions optional for those who may not need them. In other words, I reduced the cognitive load by nesting the instructions.

Retrospective

💡 At the end of this project, I felt that the product was still not optimized enough to users’ needs, but that it got a whole lot closer due to usability test feedback. I measured this by how quickly users completed tasks correctly, and how much they hesitated.

💡 Next time, I would put more effort into the research phase, and ensure that whatever problem I’m solving, gets solved for the people, with a more objective approach.

💡 I designed Medicaid Kit’s user experience to lessen the intimidation of signing up for free health insurance. All it could ever be is a band-aid solution to the much larger problem of a profit-driven healthcare system in the US.

💡 Design Thinking guided me to the answers I needed to bring this prototype to a useable level. It was harder than I ever imaged, but a rewarding experience in the end! This concludes my first User Experience capstone project and case study.

Want to try the prototype yourself? 👀

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made by Meg in 2023 on TypeDream